Get your sci-fi fix with Life at the cinemas this holidays

Life is a new sci-fi thriller about an alien that threatens everyone on a space station and ultimately all life on Earth.

Daniel Espinosa, best known for Safe House and Child 44, directs this thriller. He has a small but stellar cast and uses a lot of close up photography largely in the vacuum of a weightless environment.

Six astronauts aboard a space station circling Earth have built a laboratory to run tests on samples that have been collected from Mars, to see if there is any evidence of extraterrestrial life.

The samples contain a large, single-celled organism – the first example of life beyond Earth.

But things aren’t always what they seem. Crew member Hugh Derry (played by Ariyon Bakare) begins to conduct research on the alien organism, and his methods end up having unintended consequences. The life form proves to have a voracious appetite and is more intelligent than anyone ever expected.

The alien, who has been named Calvin by children back on Earth, soon takes on a new persona and after disabling Hugh, kills crew member Roy Adams (played by Ryan Reynolds) who had come to Hugh’s aid.

From here Calvin goes on a killing spree and with each death he grows in size, strength, speed and intelligence. One by one members of the crew are taken down by Calvin until only two remain, Miranda North (played by Rebecca Ferguson) and David Jordan (played by Jake Gyllenhaal).

After the Earth sends a space ship to push the space station out towards deep space and the new ship is also destroyed by Calvin, Miranda and David realise that their oxygen is about to run out.

They come up with a desperate plan to use escape pods to ensure Calvin cannot reach Earth.

David successfully lures Calvin into his escape pod and plans to rocket to deep space while Miranda heads to Earth in the other escape pod to warn of the dangers of Mars exploration.

With a final twist the two pods collide and ….

You’ll have to go and see this well acted edge of the seat thriller to see the suspenseful conclusion.